Why would anyone continue to want to elect Democrats in California?
And why would anyone want to vote for someone like Gavin Newsom for US president?
Those are rhetorical questions, of course. Efforts to recall Newsom failed. He might even have gotten more votes than Harris had he run for president this year.
Here’s what made me think of Newsom:
March 2023: Gavin Newsom promises to build 1,200 tiny homes by Fall
Fall: Newsom's Senior Advisor on Homelessness offers a word salad explanation for the nonexistent tiny homes
August 2024: $750 MILLION gone & not a single tiny home constructed pic.twitter.com/rI6wwNFnKC
— BAY AREA STATE OF MIND (@YayAreaNews) November 20, 2024
You get a lot of bang for your tax buck in California. Apparently those houses are so very tiny that they are microscopic.
As for why people keep voting for Democrats in a place like California, this piece – by someone in the greater Philadelphia area, rather than California – comes to mind. It begins like this:
I am a woman living alone near Philadelphia with a cat, so I guess you could call me a “childless cat lady.” I never wanted children, so I never had any. Since I have dedicated my life to helping other people, for many years I subscribed to all of the social justice causes. That began to change when the neighborhood I live in became a hotbed of crime and leftist intolerance.
The writer goes on to describe the violence and chaos that has descended on her neighborhood in recent years, then explains her state of mind these days:
A few months ago, there was a meme on Facebook that showed a white woman saying, “I don’t feel safe in my neighborhood,” and a man answered her, “You literally voted for this.” I now understand that my situation resembles this cartoon.
I have voted Democrat all my life. I supported soft-on-crime candidates because I didn’t want to see people go to prison and lose their chance at a better life. But now I see the ruin that we have to live with as a result of these policies. The white liberals in the suburbs do not live with the consequences of their votes. I do. …
Like most people, I just want to be safe. I want to live in a place where I can leave my apartment without fear that the man who saw me watch him attack a woman will come back and attack me. I want to live in a place where I’m not risking verbal violence for engaging in private phone conversations while taking a walk.I want there to be police who are here to protect me and other innocent citizens who just want to do our jobs, buy affordable food, and go to the YMCA in peace.
Is that too much to ask? Democrats seem to think it is. Many of my liberal friends expressed horror that “Americans value their pocketbooks more than my human rights.” Apparently wanting to pay the rent and afford food and medications is something we should be ashamed of.
My entire life, I saw myself on the left. But now I understand that the left has left me. I am a childless cat lady for law and order. I want a government that will protect me and my cat, that cares about the price of food and doesn’t say people should be satisfied with a lot of new minimum wage jobs that will not allow them to support their families. I am tired of being told my safety doesn’t matter and that I’m racist for pointing out that there is crime on the streets of my neighborhood.
That is how a mind changes.
I’m not 100% sure that this lady is ready to vote for Republicans across the board, but I suspect that she is. If so, she’s not alone – in most blue cities, the GOP gained a substantial percentage of votes compared to 2020. But when will it be enough to really change things in a place like Philadelphia? Or in California?
Meanwhile, Newsom declares he’s going to “Trump-proof” the state:
Newsom’s office told The Associated Press that the governor and lawmakers are ready to “Trump-proof” California’s state laws. His announcement Thursday called on the Legislature to give the attorney general’s office more funding to fight federal challenges when they meet in December.
Newsom and other governors seem to think – or continue to want their voters to think – that Trump threatens “reproductive rights.” And yet Trump has said very clearly that he thinks that abortion should be left to the states. In California, Democrats control everything and there is zero chance that the state won’t have liberal abortion laws. As for birth control and/or IVF, the GOP isn’t against them. But Democrats think it’s a winning strategy to say they are, and to cast themselves as the brave liberty-lovers who will defend those practices against all big bad Republican threats.
And then there’s the issue of illegal aliens and their removal. Another topic for another post.
NOTE: This post makes me think I should start a new category, “Election 2028.” But I’ll desist for a while.
I thought you were going to comment on the unemployment insurance skyrocketing for California business owners because the state defaulted on a federal loan.
Or the price of gas increasing by something like 60 cents a gallon from it’s already highest in the nation level.
But this one is bad too.
Most of my Californian family members seem to actually believe the “Trump is Hitler” line. They still believe he said neo-Nazis were fine people, even though I have provided the link to what he actually said. I have given up. Having a relationship with these people means not talking about politics. For my next visit, I will have to bite my tongue until it bleeds since there is now a 17-year-old “transgender” in the group. I think this is tragic for this young man and his entire future. His mother is as left-wing as they come and I have no doubt she has encouraged this.
🙂 Guess ‘Thangs have changed since Reagan was Gov. Know a couple women who live out there, and another one whose husband (a friend of mine) recently died. All liberals or progressives. One woman runs a blog is a diehard Democrat—still in shock ‘n intense morning about the Harris Loss…to help console her I sent the Don’t Cry, Cryo!.
Can’t even imagine living in California…
I might even venture that Philadelphia woman has morphed into the outside counties of Philadelphia. Weeks leading to the election, Harris signs might have outnumbered Trump’s in some very nice neighborhoods outside of Philadelphia.
$62,500.00 per shed.
Expensive, even for California
I hate to bring up Facebook posts, but some friends of mine will speak their political minds there. A recent one went something like this: “Boy, won’t those Trump voters be shocked when Trump’s new policies are enacted and inflation becomes much worse than it was under Biden.” Then a few of his friends concur.
Well, neither he nor I know for sure what will happen going forward. However, does this guy have an inkling of what causes inflation? Does he remember that it was actually low under Trump’s first term? Has he noticed that the stock market is up a lot since Trump won? Does he understand that the big money in the stock market includes many smart people who have a pretty good understanding of the economy?
And homeless Californians will be able to commute to their tiny homes on high speed rail! Powered by wind and solar!
”However, does this guy have an inkling of what causes inflation?”
His thinking is like that of most cults: a breakdown of people and events into good & bad. Good things are caused by good people. Bad things are caused by bad people. Inflation is a bad thing. Trump is a bad person. Therefore inflation is caused by Trump (or more generally, by Republicans). If you could ever get him to see that at least this most recent bout of inflation was caused by Democrats, he would instantly flip into believing that inflation is a good thing.
mkent,
There weren’t any explanations on the thinking involved in that post, but I wonder if he bought into the Harris rhetoric that inflation is cause by corporate price gouging. Then along mkent’s line: Trump will enable bad corporations, then bad corporations will engage in more price gouging.
Personally, I thought the price gouging claim was so absurd that I probably erroneously felt that no one could believe it.
Another interesting piece of the puzzle is that California voters vote mostly conservative on the ballot propositions. Proposition 36, a tough(er) on crime change to the previous proposition 47, was adopted by the voters with about 3/4 of the vote. This after Newsom and many Democrat officials campaigned wholeheartedly against it. An effort to raise the minimum wage, proposition 32, was defeated albeit narrowly. Proposition 5 to gut proposition 13 by allowing increases in property taxes to be passed with 55% instead of 67% of the vote was defeated.
The conservative tilt in the propositions was despite the Democrat Attorney General putting wholly misleading titles on them in the ballot.
In the same election, the voters kept the Democrats’ supermajority in the legislature. They voted for the execrable Adam Schiff for the Senate. It looks like they will be able to flip several Republican seats in the Congress.
”I wonder if he bought into the Harris rhetoric that inflation is cause by corporate price gouging.”
Maybe, but I doubt it. I can’t speak to your particular example, but generally, the causal order goes the other way. It’s not “Republicans cause price gouging…price gouging causes inflation…inflation is bad…therefore Republicans are evil.” It’s “Republicans are evil…inflation is bad…therefore Republicans cause inflation” then — maybe — try to find a mechanism by which the Republicans cause the evil (price gouging), but maybe not. That last step isn’t really necessary.
Which is why even if you can disprove the price gouging (prices have gone up 50% on items with only a 3% profit margin), the “conclusion” that Republicans are evil doesn’t go away. Because it’s not a conclusion. It’s an axiom.
Which is why, as Neo says, a mind is so hard to change.
mkent,
Also in this fantasy world all the producers of food and owners of grocery stores are evil Republicans. For some reason these evil price gougers didn’t gouge for like 40 years until three years ago when it suddenly dawned on them to do it.
Philly Cat Lady is traipsing down a path blazed by Robin of Berkeley.
The childless Philadelphia cat lady concludes,
“The majority of America is with me. But this is also a warning to the Republicans. If they don’t deliver and if the Democrats manage to get the message and get their act together with a platform that addresses our needs, we swing voters will swing again.”
That is a very salient warning. Our side had best take it seriously. BUT . . .
even if she and other swing voters swing back, those among them with functioning minds and memories now know, in some substantive measure, that
the establishment’s assurances are to be taken with grains of salt, and its gaslighting forays have now been seen to be nakedly transparent,
and y’know what? — the swung-back voters will be unable to un-know and un-see it.
That may well comprise Trump’s most lasting legacy, especially if Trump and the Republicans “don’t deliver.” The toothpaste is out of the tube either way.
well they are economically illiterate, scientifically ignorant and logically impaired other than that, they are fine
“The majority of America is with me. But this is also a warning to the Republicans. If they don’t deliver . . .”
Is Trump’s agenda supposed to turn things around in his single 4 year term what was decades in the making? How much time will Americans allow before they claim his policies are a failure if there are a couple of steps back before the fruits of deregulation start to be felt. Maybe I’m wrong on this, but I would imagine the turnaround could take time. And who knows what kind of resistance there will be.
And I think it was Musk who said there will likely be some pain involved in the DOGE process.
Shouldn’t Trump preface his agenda with some kind of appeal for patience?